Twenty-six years ago today, a massive explosion at Pacific Engineering & Production Company of Nevada — known as PEPCON — in Henderson killed two people, caused $70 million in damage and sent shock waves hundreds of miles.

The facility produced ammonium perchlorate — used to boost the performance of rocket fuel.

For those who lived in the Las Vegas Valley at the time, it’s a key memory.

“I think about the blast every time I see a plume of smoke,” Henderson Home News blogger Mandy Walton wrote in 2009. “It’s a memory that just won’t go away.”